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Wednesday, July 8, 2015

An Innovative Library Lifts the Fortunes of a Chinese Town

Li Xiaodong, a prize-winning
architect, was inspired by the branches of local fruit trees, which he
used to cover the Liyuan library's roof and exterior walls.Credit
Sim Chi Yin for The New York Times

JIAOJIEHE,
China — Nestled among the shimmering chestnut, walnut and peach trees
of a deep valley surrounded by craggy hills, the tiny village of
Jiaojiehe suffers from being close to the nation’s capital. The young
flee easily to the big city, leaving the elderly behind, lonely and
poor.

In today’s China,
villages like this often try to engineer a sense of well-being by
opening a new medical clinic, say, or by upgrading the water supply.

But
Li Xiaodong, an award-winning architect who fuses traditional Chinese
ideas of design with Western themes, had a different idea for Jiaojiehe.
He was captivated by the potential he saw in the village’s most
abundant natural resource, the branches of its thousands of trees, which
the locals harvest for fuel.

So
he built a library — with a twist. At its base, it is a steel and glass
box in the vein of a Philip Johnson open-plan creation from the 1950s,
but its exterior walls and roof are clad with fruit-tree twigs